Death Comes to the School

October 16, 2017
Set in 1820, Lloyd’s enjoyable fifth Kurland St. Mary mystery (after 2016’s Death Comes to the Fair) opens with Maj. Sir Robert Kurland and his wife of three years, Lucy, preparing Kurland Hall for Christmas. Depressed from a recent miscarriage, Lucy is dismayed to receive a venomous poison-pen note predicting that she will die alone and childless—and to learn that others are receiving similar notes. Further unpleasantness ensues. Soon after Lucy meets Martha Broomfield, the cruel mistress of the village school she and her husband have endowed, Miss Broomfield is found dead at her desk, stabbed through the eye with a quill pen. In her effort to learn more about the victim, Lucy contacts the schoolmistress’s former employer and discovers a cache of costly jewelry and a mysterious key in Miss Broomfield’s quarters that suggest possible motives, but she remains unsure whether the murder and the poison-pen letters are linked. The liveliness of Lloyd’s many secondary characters and the marital tensions arising from Lucy’s fertility woes add richness to the well-plotted puzzle. Agent: Deirdre Knight, Knight Agency.

October 15, 2017
A pair of married sleuths find their lives disrupted by murder and misdeeds in 1820. Lucy, Lady Kurland, has not recovered physically or mentally from the two miscarriages she's suffered in the past six months. Her husband, Sir Robert, who still has ongoing pain from an equestrian mishap at Waterloo, is never easy to deal with, and Lucy fears that her inability to provide an heir is the reason he has not sought her sexual favors. When Lucy receives a poison-pen letter, she's deeply disturbed; when more people receive similar letters, they become a riddle she hopes to solve. But not before a more important riddle: the murder of Miss Broomfield, the woman who was hired at the last minute to teach in the village school the Kurlands endow. A visit to the school convinces Lucy that Miss Broomfield is not at all suited to teach young children. She not only seems to dislike them, but also displays a religious mania for sulfur and brimstone that makes Lucy wonder if she's the poison pen. The woman was killed by being stabbed with a long hat pin; there was also a quill pen stuck in her eye. Inquiries reveal that Miss Broomfield was dismissed from her prior job and that she may have come from a wealthy background, if indeed all the valuable jewelry Lucy finds at the schoolhouse is legally hers. Robert, who serves as the local magistrate, is not eager for his fragile wife to become involved in another investigation (Death Comes to Kurland Hall, 2015, etc.), but he also knows that strong-minded Lucy doesn't always heed his advice. A romance of married life intertwined with a murder puzzle featuring a heroine suitable for a Jane Austen novel.

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December 1, 2017

Three years after the events of Death Comes to the Fair, Lucy Harrington and her husband, Major Sir Robert Kurland, struggle with their marriage in the wake of several miscarriages. But the couple reconcile to probe the murder of the teacher at the school they had established. This Regency mystery will appeal to readers of Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen.--LH

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